The editors of Business Insider recently caught up with dream analysis expert and author Diane Brandon who has earned a brilliant reputation around the world over the past 40 years of her career in dream interpretation and sleep research. The BI team was interested in learning exactly which nightmares she has observed most often in her vast experience with thousands of clients, as well as the powerful hidden meaning(s) embedded in each nightmare.

In the interview Diane Brandon notes, “I feel that our unconscious, which is the source of most but not all of our dreams, is a wonderful inner ally that is trying to bring us to wholeness and balance.” Among the most interesting of Brandon’s top ten is the common nightmare of being chased. Brandon points out that this nightmare is a major red flag for one or more stressors in someone’s daily life, in particular an underlying pressure that is manifesting in order to make you aware that you’re avoiding something significant that needs to be taken care of. Another of my favorites is the common nightmare of losing one’s teeth. Generally, this means you feel out of control, powerless, or inadequate. It can also reflect social embarrassment, fear of being unattractive, or fear of being revealed as inadequate or not up to snuff. Another of the ten is the nightmare of falling, which tends to indicate a fear of not being in control, a feeling of having nothing solid to hold onto in life, or even a fear of death.

You can read the entire top ten by visiting BusinessInsider.com. Worth noting is that Diane points out how important it is to not only pay careful attention to the narrative of a nightmare in order to unlock its hidden meaning, but also to pay attention to the emotions you are experiencing while having them. Brandon says she often encounters clients whose dreams fall into the narrative of what some assume to be a nightmare (such as being chased or falling), but if you are feeling happy or peaceful during the experience then it is not a nightmare — simply a dream with very little meaning or significance, and nothing to worry about.